


Office Tango for 3

by Dangersocks



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Breasts, Cecil Has Tentacles, Chair Bondage, F/F, Femslash, Gender or Sex Swap, Light Bondage, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mountains, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Rule 63, Smut, Tentacles, can you believe steph carlsberg?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:49:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dangersocks/pseuds/Dangersocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carla works late at the lab. Cecelia visits. She is not alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Office Tango for 3

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bumbleshark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumbleshark/gifts).



> This is my first femslash. Criticisms and thoughts would be tentastical. 
> 
> Dedicated to [Lovelynobody00](http://lovelynobody00.tumblr.com/) for being the one who introduced me to Night Vale. Furthermore, she encourages more lady-on-lady. This is my offering of that.
> 
> And my betas saved me throughout this. Especially in confidence boosting. A huge shout-out to [Thetallesthobbit](http://thetallesthobbit.tumblr.com/); [Octoberspirit](http://octoberspirit.tumblr.com/); my good friend Hilary; and my ace girlfriend who is okay with letting me re-enact positions to make sure boobs really do do that. 
> 
> Don't ever change.

Carla sits in her office chair. It is small and functional: a garage sale find that has yet to try to kill her. It has wheels. She leans over the microscope on her desk with her ankles tucked under her -- red converse shoes bobbing against the metal chair foundations as she hunches to squint into the eyepiece. Her bandaged fingers adjust the magnification of her sample but then the desk lamp flickers, interrupting her focus.

She is suddenly aware of how silent the laboratory is. Carla can hear the soft hum of the light’s bulb and it strains to keep a constant presence with her, failing briefly with another flicker before resuming its chorus of white noise. Her lips are thin as she withholds a frown, unhinging her ankles to push her chair a desk’s length away.

City Council, fearing an attack from enemies in the Blood Space War, has recently placed the town under a blackout-after-dark notice. Carla finds this preposterous but she’s already paid for one ticket and the lab budget will not account for curtains or blinds. Instead, she works without the main lights with her desk removed to a corner of the lab where her lamp cannot illuminate the windows.

It is a good lamp and it has never misbehaved before. And more importantly, she needs it right now to finish today’s work. Non-existent space attacks and Secret Police visits are not going to hinder her progress any further with this experiment.

She squeaks across the tile until she can see the outlet in the wall that powers her lamp, her microscope and her computer. Dark, shining electrical tape, employed to mark the boundaries of the black hole that sometimes appears, is still a good two feet away from her desk’s power source. The black hole is absent tonight and unless it has migrated into the walls to eat at the wiring, it is not the thing that is disrupting her power.

The desk light fluxuates once more but now Carla realizes that her microscope lamp is not affected by the power surge. The screensaver on her computer also remains uninterrupted, floating a picture of Carla and her girlfriend at the annual parade of hooded figures, smiling (well, Carla had _tried_ to smile) at intern Scott just seconds before a rookery of rabid penguins had swooped down from a blood red sky.

She takes a moment of silence for the poor intern, contemplating how that date had been one of the strangest, most tragic dates yet. And within that pause for reflection, Carla becomes even more aware of how hushed the laboratory has become. She has given away her perfectly-kept timepiece but she would estimate that it is well into midnight.

The main orb of light that maintains her workspace flutters again. The tiny glow from her microscope remains a stark and bright rejection of the darkness. Drifting across her monitor, Carla’s face still tries to smile back at the late intern Scott. Her outline glows like the person beside her in the photograph...

The air stirs and Carla knows that she is not alone.

She also understands, now: power failures and fragile calms.

Carla plants her feet in order to pull herself back to her work. She finds the magnification dials with familiarity born from habit as the desklamp finally dies with a sizzle.

She says, “I heard the show. What did Steph say to kick off your impromptu editorial this time?”

And from the doorway comes the answer to the darkness. It also explains the hush that almost always gathers just before she speaks: Cecelia Palmer.

The scientist smiles as Cecelia announces, “Stephanie _Carlsberg_ wanted me to ask you to look into the possibility of her, and us, and the whole town switching genders.”

Carla stops observing the specimen under the microscope to raise one eyebrow. Actually, that possibility _could_ explain a few things that have been bothering --

“And I told her that imposing gender identities on everyone in town is a new low for her, and that if she’s not happy with the status quo she can just pack up her ugly car and go to Desert Bluffs.”

Cecelia steps into the room, her heels clacking on the tile as if to annunciate her annoyance like a repeated stab wound might prove a point. Carla listens with polite awareness, hardly sharing in her lover’s quarrel with one Stephanie _Carlsberg_.

“And she wanted me to interrupt your important work for such a stupid conspiracy,” ululates Cecelia.

Carla’s grin turns ironic. Cecelia is not here at this hour to ensure that Carla gets her work finished. Aliens and police are one thing but girlfriends are completely another. Heck, Carla will be the first to admit that she sometimes puts Science before Cecelia. The woman peers one last time at the microscope in case the tiny light there decides to give up on her too.

A small presence slithers at her feet as if sensing her thoughts. The lamp immediately flickers to life and Carla, blinking back the after-image from the sudden flare, thinks that she perceives the fleeting image of a smokey tendril shying away from where her eye chases it.

It is fuzzy and see-through.

It is imagined and not real.

Now...transparent, it is like a reflection in glass and most probably existing.

Finally: gone an instant later but firmly remembered with irrefutable detail.

Carla leans back, her labcoat hanging down from the sides of her chair and her jeans rumbled. “It’s nice that you help keep distractions from interrupting my work, _Cielito_.”

Cecelia flashes bright eyes across the room and white teeth and Carla loses the heart to point out that her phrase has been meant ironically.

“I know, right?!” Cecelia gushes, turning to pace. “Can you even imagine me as a guy? And you, oh...no. No, my Carla! You are perfect as you are.”

Something strokes at Carla’s heel, just over the lip of her shoe. It nudges her through the thick socks that she wears now after the wheat and wheat-by-product outbreak. Carla taps her foot once and is pleased when the petting stops as the thing remembers the signal she had created from the last time they had met. It wraps a curving path slowly up her leg, pressing against the denim as Carla drums her calloused fingers on the desk’s surface.

Cecelia has paused, sensing the coded permission from the foot tap to the smoky appendage. Carla does not know how the two communicate but she’s seen demonstrations of their shared interactions before. Perhaps Cecelia is noticing the shadows gathering under the office chair holding the scientist. As if caught with dubious intentions, the radio host clears her throat and in the dim lighting she may seem as if she is flushing.

 _Cielito lindo_ , Carla thinks fondly as she watches her girlfriend. Despite the velvet orange heels, the other woman is in formal dress pants, a white dress shirt with rolled up sleeves, black suspenders with white eyes stitched into them, and a purple tie that has been loosened to the point of requiring a complete retying. For a voice that serenades the town every evening, Cecelia has no need for a fashion sense (and often forgoes one) but she looks impressive today -- orange shoes aside.

Carla supposes that she is not one to talk. She is in jeans and an old t-shirt beneath her labcoat. She hasn’t done anything but throw her hair into a quick bun and she probably needs a shower. Her sloppy appearance doesn’t dissuade the weight that has crawled up her leg. It settles across her right thigh and she knows that if she looks down she will get vertigo if she stares at it.

They aren’t called tentacles, according to Cecelia. (Carla wonders if someone like Steph _Carlsberg_ had called them that at some point, “and they most certainly _are not_!”) Yet they _are_ appendages that creep from the edges of Carla’s peripherals and are inherent to the radio host. They have mass but are difficult to observe. They have no definitive properties that Carla has yet surveyed -- sometimes steaming, sometimes solid, sometimes dripping, and other times ceasing to exist the moment anyone acknowledges them. When asked, Cecelia had initially displayed a horrifying shame at their discovery, followed by outright denial. Carla has proudly strived to fix that reaction, finding Cecelia’s quirks no less disgusting than what she thinks of her own habits and body functions. And whereas Carla’s flaws are painted over in a broad brush of “perfect” and “brave”, Cecelia’s have filled a role of being scientifically interesting and strangely suited to embody the essence of the town.

They have learned to live with themselves. They are both eager to throw themselves at discovering the other.

Despite the month since having encountered _this side_ of her girlfriend, Carla’s learned that Cecelia is not much help in explaining her “helpers”. They just are. And it puzzles the radio host more that others seem to be handicapped by their own lack of whispery black limbs. They manifest on their own schedule and no amount of asking from Carla has been able to make Cecelia produce them on a whim.

Carla refrains from touching the one on her leg, fearing that she may spook it. She shifts to swivel the chair around to face her lover.

The chair moves almost of its own accord and the tendril on Carla’s lap tightens to steady her. With a strict willpower, the scientist tenses at the unexpected help but continues to refrain from glancing down. She knows she’s not yet ready to see them. It is too early in this impromptu date to give herself a headache. She locks eyes with Ceceila instead.

The radio host is studying her back, though her features are softened by reverential adoration and the dark.

“Did you come to watch me work?” Carla asks, inviting the other to segue into new excuses for being here.

“I could watch you work for hours,” Cecelia murmurs. When she drops her voice it turns everything into a deep, powerful promise. Carla is convinced that Cecelia knows exactly what she can do with her words and what effect it has on her most curious of listeners.

Carla represses a creeping flush now, shaking her head and reaching back to scratch at her hairline. Something cold and tentative tickles her fingers and she holds very still. The thing at her neck has a presence (she doesn’t look over her shoulder, uncertain as to how she will feel if the desk is swimming in a writhing maw of nothing). She holds Cecelia’s eyes which are a safe place to look and the other woman frowns as she stares through Carla. “They don’t care much for the ponytail.”

“Oh?”

Cecelia brings herself to her full height and scowls. “They are asking if they can remove it. They will be careful to not wreck your elastic.”

“Thanks,” the scientist answers carefully. She had been angry at Cecelia for the destruction of the previous hair band, and the ones before that as well. Her stash at home has disappeared. Apparently, the town has decided to stop stocking the accoutrement so the one she wears here at the lab has been salvaged in a chance find (thank-you shippers from StrexCorp Synergists). She is pleased that Cecelia has remembered that argument. They might actually finish a conversation regarding haircuts as a preventative measure against split-ends…

“But that’s it,” Cecelia commands to her side. The lamplight should really extend further into the room but it does not. “After that, you don’t get to touch the hair.”

The light does pierce the room, faintly shining on the fixtures behind Cecelia. Funny, how Carla had thought otherwise. Or, she self-corrects, something has been cowed out of existence and no longer has the heart to manipulate light photons.

A weight perches behind her, rocking the chair back. If they -- the shadow-shape things -- have been spooked away by Cecelia’s strictness to seek shelter with a more forgiving and much more curious scientist, well...Carla can live with that.

She sits very still as something shifts to untangle her thick coif from bondage and though no part of this something touches her scalp or neck, a shiver plays down her spine just before her hair falls free.

“Perfect,” sings Cecelia and the weight in Carla’s lap gives a squeeze in agreement which makes the scientist tense at its boldness. A distraction exists there. The layer of denim doesn’t help and Carla believes that, beneath her, a pair of shoes are hidden from visible light by the sheer number of them -- writhing and circling her humble island of a chair.

The shiver lingers.

The scientist concludes that she is surrounded simply from the presence that they give off. The air is tense with their indecipherable weight or power. The thought of these things so close and personal doesn’t frighten her but being the centre of their attention threatens to leave her feeling abashed. Ears burning (and thankfully hidden by hair), Carla decides that she needs to take control of this situation.

On instinct, she says in her best imitation of her lover’s coyness: “you know, I have to agree with Stephanie Carlsberg with one thing.”

Cecelia’s smile drops off of her face immediately and like a needle being ripped across recorded weather, even the hum of the computer goes silent. Only the slight squeak of Carla’s chair interrupts.

“Oh?” Cecelia murmurs, a mimicry of the chair squeak. The small sound contains enough emotion to explain that a betrayal is expected. That a heart is ready to break.

Carla is well used to the temperamental moods of her girlfriend -- like sudden summer squalls or the delivery schedule of Big Rico’s (“you didn’t order a pizza? Actually, you’re ordering ten large squid and squab right now, and look, they are delivered! Badda bing, badda boom! Speed like that deserves a tip, ma’am.”) -- and she tightens her inner thighs under the weight of her lap “friend” to explain away any intentions of destroying her girlfriend’s sometimes too-fragile world. “If you come over here I could explain the concept of mountains to you.”

Cecelia works to keep her expression indifferent. The non-corporeal weight at Carla’s shoulder gives a push and the chair rolls along the floor far smoother than it usually would. Carla continues to watch her girlfriend lose her professional disinterest in order to watch how the unearthly appendages seem to help. “You’re not going to use your computer to find me a picture? I know that Steph _Carlsberg_ has some very _nice ones_ on her Facebook page and…”

The chair stops perfectly in front of Cecelia as if it had its own propulsion system. The scientist hooks her shoes on the chair legs again and doesn’t quirk a brow when she feels something tugging at her shoelaces. Her eyes are directed instead at the suspenders which decidedly belong coiled in her palms rather than over the other woman’s shoulders. From behind Cecelia there comes a snap of clasps and the taut elastic goes limp in Carla’s grip. Cecelia starts to turn and frown, which causes her girlfriend to quickly replace loose suspenders in favour of a fairly sturdy tie.

“I think your ‘helpers’ are more interested in this lesson than you are,” Carla teases. The suspenders are not alone. Carla’s shoelaces are being pulled from their loops. More length is being unstrung than is required to loosen her footwear but nothing yet tries to remove them from Carla’s feet.

A wall of insouciance, Cecelia has clasped her hands behind her. “You were saying something about proving mountains were real?”

Carla peers up from her chair, aware that if she rises she may trip over unseen obstacles. She can’t move her feet anyhow and she may be pressed back down again by an unseen seatbelt. The hindered mobility is oddly appealing to the woman. She pulls instead, careful of the neck connected to the tie. Cecelia bends over givingly.

“They come in twos, sometimes,” Carla whispers. “Rising up from the topography, the skin of the earth...and they are unique and beautiful. It would be just like our town council to try to keep these things to themselves...containing them.” And as if on cue, the tie holds itself down --shadow shapes tickling Carla’s hand to take over -- and Carla doesn’t stare at this because she’s busy relocating her fingers to find a button in the white dress shirt. To slip within and tug at the front of a bra. She grins when she hears Cecelia’s reply hitch. It breaks off in a stuttered breath that is quickly followed by a swallow.

Cecelia’s big eyes flick at the tie holding her down with some surprise. Carla deduces that she has the strange shadow-shapes working _with_ her and that they are quick to pick up on things that Cecelia may miss. Two separate minds at work, independent of one another? Interesting…

“Okay, I’m...willing to give this an open-minded discussion,” Cecelia offers, her voice low and almost to the pitch that will distract the scientist. Cecelia continues to keep her fingers locked behind her in an image of composed patience.

Both of Carla’s legs have snakes coiling up them, criss-crossing around kneecaps and playing in the folds and creases of her large jeans. The weight atop of her one thigh gains a partner. She doesn’t know how they wrap around her completely without pressing between her and the seat. They would have to change dimensions, growing flat and unobstructive underneath her before filling out and becoming _more_ where space is available. Carla knows that she cannot look or they will go away, or her head will swim or perhaps she may wake up and it will be tomorrow and she will have somehow -- mercifully? -- forgotten whatever had come next.

She boldly keeps her fingers steady, using the bra at the front of Cecelia to pull the woman closer to her. It blocks out peripherals and makes Carla’s girlfriend the centre of her world.

“Well,” she resumes. “Mountains have valleys between them.” Carla can only draw a line into the shirt with her pinky, climbing Cecelia’s abs with a ghost touch and wishing she could continue the trail up over the strap and between the breasts. The shirt is in the way and the angle is not quite right.

Cecelia has stopped breathing, though. That counts as a triumph (or will soon be a concern.)

“Valleys,” susurrates the radio host. “There are other valleys, look to the south…”

Perhaps encouraged by the direction, the protrusions entwining Carla’s thighs tighten, tugging at denim without enough force to stop feeling or blood flow to her legs, but firm enough to prove themselves hopelessly snug. Carla can say that this has a specific effect on her “south valley” but she is the one who has started this so she will be the one to dictate control.

She attempts a groan, channeling the oaky tone she apparently possesses and when Cecelia twitches at the sound, Carla pulls her closer and says, “mountains have peaks that climbers want to conquer.” She lets her teeth clack over a shining, pearl button and curls her tongue around the thread, sucking in enough air to provoke a weak whistle from the item. If she pulls and destroys the shirt fastener, perhaps that is retribution for the countless hair elastics...

Cecelia is being good and keeping her hands locked at her back, not yet running long fingers through Carla’s hair. This is intriguing, but further contemplation on this becomes difficult when Carla’s vision clouds for an instant. She realizes that the projection things are working to help her undo the shirt bindings. Carla closes her eyes to keep from feeling nauseated by their appearance. The button between her incisors is a grounding focal point and it brings her close to a quivering sternum that Carla can lean in and brush with her nose.

Cecelia smells like cigarette smoke and swimming pools. The chlorine comes from the day’s crisis at the public pool that the reporter had been on scene for. It masks the other scents that Carla has categorized during prior dates -- nosebleed iron, petrichor, a perfume that Carla had developed because memori

 

and soap that her family used to buy when Carla had been _pequeño_. The scientist makes it obvious that she is breathing in her date’s smell before the button pops free, tucked behind her teeth. Cecelia’s shirt flutters open, brushing the sides of her seated partner’s face.

Carla slips her fingers around the the placket of the shirt, spitting the button free and not hearing it bounce on the floor. Cecelia is very still.

“Mountains,” Carla continues, eyes closed and trying not to lose focus from the tendrils she has briefly seen and what her mind wants to explain. “Peaks, worth...climbing to.”

The bra -- found through questing fingers -- keeps Cecelia bent as Carla pulls on the front strap connecting the cups. Her calloused hands test the wire, perched over warm body heat and a fluttering pulse. Both hands work, one on the strap in the centre and the other sliding a touch over a satin cup on Cecelia’s left, pulling the cover down.

Cecelia makes a “tch” sound, repressing. This coaxes the scientist to peek. No vertigo or black oblivion awaits her. Just a breast propping over the cup of a bra that is light green with a white cloud pattern and white lace decorating the top.

“Clouds,” tsks Carla. “Someone’s been disobeying City Council.”

“Don’t tell,” Cecelia pleads, breathless. It is hard to tell whether or not the request is to be taken seriously. “They think I’m wearing the furry one today.”

“Mmm, I won’t tell,” promises the scientist, trailing a finger along the fabric as it pushes up the breast that has exposed a pert nipple. Poking at the pattern, Carla adds, “It is fitting, for mountains have clouds around them. They thrust that far out of the earth…”

The “nngn” Cecelia makes hints of something primal but it is still held back. Carla likes that Cecelia has kept her hands uncharacteristically out of her hair. She likes seeing her girlfriend this way. She shifts herself, moving to lessen the friction at her crotch and the belt around her lap tightens unexpectedly. Carla stops to adjust her weight, balance required to fight the pin. This allows her to find that while her shoe laces have been stripped free, they have also been replaced.

Living, cognizant shoestrings.

She almost looks down. Carla almost steals a glance to understand why her feet can flex but the shoes themselves tighten to lock against the chair. She tries to shift once more but finds that she is helplessly fixed to the seat. Her hands clench on Cecelia’s shirt for an anchor, and the host adjusts just enough to give Carla balance but no satisfaction at her groin.

“Have you decided that mountains aren’t worth thinking about?”

Cecelia’s voice is rueful, but it lets the scientist know that her girlfriend pays very good attention.

Carla _needs_ to focus. “Your mountains, I think about...often.” She ghosts a breath over Cecelia’s exposed nipple and it elicits a squeak from her lover’s throat. “I think about them when I should be working.” She extends her tongue to lick and finds the chair drawn away.

“You...tease,” Cecelia accuses, head thrown back and chest thrusting forward.

Carla stares, mouth open and only able to pull at the other with the cloth. The chair stops drifting but it has a mind of its own.

“I am _not_ teasing,” Carla counters. “I’m stuck because of your…‘helpers.’”

The heaving chest before Carla deliberately pauses, and then the other woman drops her gaze with a frown. “I’m not…”

“ _You’re_ the tease,” Carla wiggles. Her jeans are tight and yet they don’t rub the right way at her crotch. The scientist is still frustratingly secured to the chair.

Cecelia does not bear the expected expression of smugness. Rather, she swallows and glances off to the side. For fear of seeing the tendrils too, Carla does not follow the stare.

“I...uh, this is new.”

“What’s new?” Carla inquires. She still can’t move anything but her hands and Cecelia isn’t helping by moving closer.

Cecelia swallows and then casts an apologetic look at her lover. “I’m not in control of them.”

Carla blinks.

She then frowns.

To justify the point, Cecelia attempts to squirm and manages to shift, barely revealing one side of an arm. It has been strung behind her back by her tie. A coil of black waves at Carla from Cecelia’s wrists, making the scientist dizzy and immediately glance away.

“They’ve restrained you, too.”

“Uh huh,” grunts Cecelia.

“I can’t get out of my chair,” Carla lays out. She is not yet concerned...

Cecelia clears her throat and needs to do so twice. She continues to lean over the office chair, her chest exposed. “If...I...you, need to stop. Um, I’m certain I could exert control…”

Something slips onto Carla’s ankle, pushing into the thick wool sock. It strokes soothingly, or so the scientist hopes.

Carla holds back another squirm and asks, “when you’re alone and...experimenting with your...these...is it okay? Do you do that?”

Cecelia puffs a laugh. “Used to. They...can be inventive.” With more seriousness she adds, “we can stop. But they’ll never hear the end of your lesson on mountains.”

The chair edges closer and Carla chuckles (not entirely from nerves, she tells herself) when she nearly gets a breast in the eye. Oh, safety goggles in the lab. She could teach these things about lab safety next. “Let them know that I’m an expert because I’ve seen mountains. I’ve performed science...at their peaks. And this is exciting, because none are like yours...”

She punctuates the statement by pulling Cecelia’s nipple into her mouth, her chin resting on the crumpled cup of the bra. She tongues the point before letting it settle on her lower lip as she breathes and peers up. She cannot see Cecelia’s face but touching, she can feel the pitched whine that her girlfriend makes as much as she can hear it.

“Are they taking notes?” Carla tries to say, letting her teeth slide on skin with gentle teasing. Talking may not be an efficient task but the tendrils prove that they appreciate the inclusion for they add weight to Carla’s chair beside her, creeping up at the spine of the seat. She has not worn a belt today because these jeans don’t require one. The shadow-shapes assume mass and take on the role of the missing accessory, sliding through the belt loops around Carla’s waist, hidden under her large cotton t-shirt. She tightens her stomach instinctively, imagining them close to her pantline and touching her spine.

Cecelia also shivers and Carla wonders if there is something similar happening to the other woman, too.

She’d ask but that would mean a stop to the suckling. The breast is a good place to focus, distracting Carla from her own concerns. She still can’t wiggle towards any kind of satisfaction. Her new belt prevents her from getting away with arching her back or rolling her hips to rub down into the office chair. Instead, she is forced to listen to Cecelia attempt to regulate her breathing. The host tries to push herself closer but if she gains an inch she instantly loses it, pulled back by the knotted tie if Carla’s chair doesn’t shift minutely away. The level of coordination that these shadow shapes control is astounding. The one at Carla’s ankle slithers further into her sock and strokes at the curve of her foot possessively, despite the tightness of the shoe and the way her laces have grown a life of their own. They continue to cinch her feet to the chair allowing her only small knee movements that are further restrained by her lap.

Carla’s one fist bunches in the lapel of her girlfriend’s shirt. Her other arm is dedicated to cupping the crushed bra, supporting with fingers sliding on the border of wire and skin. Her mouth is going to leave a mark but she tries to do it kindly. A signature.

How ridiculous the two of them must look, making foreplay out of mountain analogies. Carla is conscious of the sounds she makes and is careful to keep them dignified. Smacking and sucking saliva have always ruined moments of intimacy for her in the past. Here, she paces her ministrations and is rewarded when Cecelia growls or keens or cries with her Voice and Carla’s muted actions encourage her to _hear_ it.

Oh, Carla loves the sound of that. She smiles and nuzzles her jaw against warm flesh with some lace. She rubs her teeth along areolas and marvels at how the tendrils thrill as much as Cecelia does -- vibrating at her hips and feet, but pointedly not elsewhere. How the skin on the nipple toughens and Cecelia shivers and wrenches, still disarmed. Her own hair clouds over Carla’s face and thankfully blocks out most of the room. She can feel a presence rising around her, causing the feeble lamplight to be more ethereal. If the lamplight is strobing, Carla would not notice.

She carefully draws the nub out with her teeth, letting saliva gather in her lips. Her attempt to be silent with her ministrations does not interrupt the frustrated warble Cecelia makes. The chair creaks and Carla once more tries to shift to alleviate the want at her groin. She cannot master any friction. The attempt comes with a slight tug -- a warning -- from the adopted belt.

“I want to...get into your…” Cecelia whimpers. “Touch you. And...hair.”

Carla releases the breast, casting a soft whiff of air across it as she observes the tensing muscles in Cecelia’s arms. The host is fighting and her face is pinched in annoyance.

Cecelia’s abs cringe and shudder as she tests her control. The muscles are tight and distinct. They are barely illuminated but Carla can see them perfectly. The host’s knees support her but it might not entirely be from her own strength. There is a slick breast shining in the dim light and Carla thinks she can make out small bruises.

“ _Bello_ ,” Carla praises. The fondness in her voice hides a level of shared chagrin at their predicament. She too would like more liberty to move and touch and brush. Caress or rub herself. Oh, and on _that_ body...

“That...don’t stop. You’re wonderful,” Cecelia gulps. Her chagrin is less hidden.

“Are you learning anything?” Carla asks. Her words are gravel.

Cecelia grunts, remastering her own inflection with inhuman ease. “I’m afraid you’re already familiar with my suspicions regarding the experience...of just one mountain. I’ll concede that _one_ could exist and be worth study...”

The coyness -- the drop in that Voice’s reverberation and the vacancy of tension against Carla’s pudendum is agonizing and unfair. The scientist strains and flexes her thighs and decides a new tactic might win her some headway. She drops her head and says conspiratorially to the side, “well what about you? Were you guys paying attention? Can you repeat the example?”

A single squeeze presses into the pad of Carla’s foot. Their pre-established code: one tap for an affirmative, or permission. The lamp flickers as movement puffs around the two women and Cecelia’s lips become a quivering line of uncertainty.

“You don’t have to cheat and share information,” Carla continues to say to the growing shapes. “You know what she likes, but do you know it better than she knows it?”

“Not, no! Not...fair--” protests the standing woman who bobs briefly on her heels to annunciate the opinion. It makes her one breast quiver beautifully while the other remains snug. Tight. Carla watches, intrigued as a blurry tendril weaves its way between them. It is not there, but it spreads atoms and sucks photons from across the room, glimmering and black while still transparent.

She has to blink, dizzy in one eye while the other sees it in perfect focus. When she stares a second longer, Carla recognizes an optical illusion behind the faint sting of a headache. She starts to feel the onset of a loss of consciousness until her pantline tugs up and denim becomes snug at her groin. Oh, just there, _exactly_ there. The scientist chokes and flinches, her eyes fluttering without permission. The sensation is painfully short lived and not satisfying enough but when Carla sees again, she can view the tendril before her with more ease. It mimics the skeleton of a hand, sliding unearthly long and unconnected bones along the bottom of the breast where it hangs over silk and polyester. The other fingers bend grotesquely to trace fictional nails over the soft branding that Carla’s tongue and teeth and suction have created.

Cecelia whines, deeply guttural as she leans forward. No amount of body strength could hold her this way for long unless the anomalistic appendages are stronger than Carla would initially expect, tirelessly holding Cecelia from behind. She watches, mesmerized and with a detached sense of disgust and wonder as the skeletoned hand-shape grows a mouth -- thick, black lips with impossibly white teeth, criss-crossing like a child’s drawing of a shark’s jaw. A sensation coils in the pit of Carla’s stomach at the sight, a mixture of horror and arousement. The mouth flashes a smile that can only be described as cheeky, before repeating the lesson that Carla has invited it to copy.

She’s not sure if she instantly regrets issuing that challenge. She’s not sure if she’s as playfully invested in the tugging, teasing force behind her predicament now. One of the fetters in her lap shifts, riding higher up her thigh. The nerves along her inner leg thrill. She can smell herself through the denim and it is still not enough.

Cecelia loses her composure as impossible things happen to her exposed nipple and Carla tries to imagine it, sensitive and subject to a tongue that is not human and teeth that grow and shift in a mouth that can rival the suction of void and vacuum. Would that alien orifice be hot, or cold?

“Are you okay?” Carla asks, out of concern. They’re losing control. Did they ever even have control?

Cecelia grits her teeth, mouth stretching as she seethes. Small waves of ghostly fingers crest down from the radio woman’s shoulder like waves over her neck, lapping at the shirt collar and likely licking and suckling along Cecelia’s hairline. Carla’s mouth goes dry as these billow down in smaller filaments to surround the other woman’s collarbone. They are a black stain against her chest.

This is hot, and Carla feels guilt at wanting to squirm further into her chair.

The thing hooked under her ankle is sprouting more limbs -- small roots bypassing the hem of Carla’s pant leg and scaling her from underneath the jeans. Carla realizes that she is still clinging to the shirt. She has forgotten that her hands exist to be used. For once, the scientist doesn’t know what to do with them. To touch at the many toothed abominations that may or may not be the best or worst things to happen to them; to cradle Cecelia’s chin and be comforting; to touch herself selfishly? It is not her hands that are tied...

A pair of glassy eyes glance up at Carla. The scientist peers back, wondering if her pupils are dilating too. “It’s in my head,” Cecelia expresses. Buried under a long whine is a surprised commentary.

“Haven’t they always been there?” Carla asks. Her question fits perfectly in an exhaled whisper. She’s been redefining these...helpers?...constantly, despite the distractions. Despite the...

Cecelia nods, a jerky and shuddered gesture. “I always hear them. And I tell them what to...to do when they’re out but...oh Carla, they...the first time...they’re telling _me_.”

The mouth or hand-thing possessing Cecelia’s breast stops with its ministrations. Carla watches it mock the shape of the bra that no longer functions there, supporting the “mountain” itself. Carla realizes that it has been repeating her demonstration even down to the attempt at muffled, unobtrusive noises.

Something strokes at Carla’s hairline, just barely. It stops when Cecelia hisses. “The...only thing I control, guh…” She’s trembling but there’s a spark of viciousness in her broken tone. “Only I...only I get to touch your hair. _**Me**_.”

The tingling non-touch at the base of Carla’s neck withdraws. The scientist swallows, wondering if there are other hairlines they would be allowed jurisdiction over. The climbing threads under her pants -- just wisps compared to the writhing force around the women -- stop just outside the panty-lining at the top of her legs. Perhaps it is to answer the question of settling territory. Or else it is to tease and punish Carla for Cecelia’s commandments. Carla is proud of herself for not groaning too loudly in frustration.

The mouths and fingers enclosing Cecelia’s neck, clavicle and bust continue to disrupt the host’s attempts at speaking despite her show of power. An important display has seemingly occurred and the scientist knows that she is woefully left out of it. Afraid that the moment she releases the bunched placket of Cecelia’s shirt, the chair will be ripped away and the two could be separated, Carla tentatively holds tight with one fist while bringing a clammy palm to her lover’s cheek.

That flesh is hot and Cecelia immediately presses into it and finds the concentration to say, “they want me to know what they plan to do to you.”

Carla’s heart might have catapulted into self-preservation and horror had Cecelia not sounded so enticed -- so raggedly _okay_ with the concept. Carla tenses in the chair, incapable of relaxing. She must have been tense for a very long time because she feels her lower back and inner thighs protest.

It’s almost impossible to make her mouth move. “What plans?”

Cecelia sucks in air with a shudder. Carla strokes a thumb along the woman’s jaw, soothingly. Maybe encouragingly. She may not want to know. Her insides _really_ want to know.

“A...ohhh, a challenge. Um…” Cecelia gulps and shuts her eyes. There is fluttering movement under her eyelids, not unlike a person dreaming. When she speaks again, her voice is a higher pitch. “They’d like me to...to remind, uh, tell, _tell_ you that...and oh, you’d appreciate the science behind this but...oh…”

Carla finds herself shushing. It’s meant to soothe and coax her girlfriend through her uncharacteristic stuttering but Carla will be the first to admit that she herself needs comforting now. She still cannot grind into the chair or against caught denim and with the delay of explanation, her own imagination is promising that whatever comes next is going to be explosive. She reeks of want but there is no gratification. One good rub. One _really_ good rub…

Cecelia blindly nods into the hand on her face. “They are reminding me that they can...they...can make you forget about your hands. Like...just like how you can see them, or can’t. It’s hard, uh, dimensions and laws of...oh, I don’t know, Carla, just...they can stretch out perceptions. Make you...forget if you climax. Stretch a moment into a day. Need you to...understand…”

Cecelia’s top teeth look sharp, slipping over her lip as the host tries to collect her senses. A tendril from the thing infesting her clavicle slips up to curl playfully under the speaker’s neck. It looks sharp and wicked and Cecelia draws her head away further into the comfort of Carla’s hold.

Carla’s own voice comes out meekly as she grasps the significance. “It’s in control, you mean. That it can draw this out for as long as it wants?”

“To our mind... _yours_ especially, oh, I’m...I’m sorry.”

“No,” Carla interrupts. God, she’s got a reputation for being brave. Time to earn it. “No, don’t apologize. What does it want?”

Her shoes tighten around her feet, the shoelaces having a life of their own. Her new belt slides around her waist, unperturbed by the belt loops. There is the sound of denim and friction but it does not continue lower, where Carla wants it. At her spine, something cool and maybe damp -- not damp, dry like parchment and scale, no, damp and chilling; changing -- poises where the small of Carla’s back meets her jeans. Her shirt would block it but perhaps these things can bypass physical objects too. It raises hackles up and down her body.

Of course any part of Cecelia -- real or from another dimension -- would be good at teasing. This begs the question of whether or not these truly are a part of Cecelia? Carla wants to scream at her theories. Dissect them. Is this sex with two or three parties? Where are lines drawn and safe words...what about safe words?

“It wants you to...ugh, earn…”

“A free lesson in awful mountain-foreplay analogies isn’t adequate?” Carla asks, sarcastic in her desperation.

Cecelia laughs, no less needy. “Hah, ah...well, if you...and you could. I really believe you could. Uh, meet this request. It...they...you know, I’ve never named them.”

“Call them your ‘Helpers.’”

“My…‘Helpers’, uh, think you should play with the other, uh…‘mountain,’ you know, for science. Multiple results…”

Carla automatically recites, “scientists repeat experiments to prove that a result will be constant every time.”

“So...you should…”

Carla licks her lips, wrapping her numb fingers into Cecelia’s shirt while tracing her jawline with the other. “So I should conquer another mountain.”

“And it’s going to...replicate...uh, how well you do, on...you.” Cecelia tightens her eyelids and Carla frowns.

“My ‘mountains?’”

“Valley,” breathes the radio host.

Carla’s insides drop a whole sea level. She clenches involuntarily and may not have imagined teeth flashing at her, surreally attached to Cecelia’s breast.

“I suck off...tits, and it sucks…”

The tendrils in her lap squeeze. The shoelaces press her feet tighter against the chair wheels until they pinch. Something smacks along Cecelia’s collar and the woman goes rigid, her lip trembling while her jaw locks. “Cli...clit.”

“I can do that,” murmurs the scientist. “But don’t tell the other scientists, that I’m going to take a handicap and not repeat the experiment entirely. A...variable. Uh, I’ll suck your breast, Cecelia. But I’ll do it with the bra still on. I’ll breathe through the fabric and still make you _feel_ it.”

The responding whimper is delicious. The tug at her pantline is encouraging. They really are a three-some, playing off of one another.

With admirable composure, Cecelia flickers her lashes against Carla’s fingertips and says with a deeper Voice that she must have fetched from reserves, “they can smell you. They can suck your precum through your pants and panties.”

Carla jerks, despite herself. Still restrained, still so close and before she thinks that the low and perfect and _dangerous_ Voice can push her towards some level of apotheoses, a strange blackness slips in front of her eyes and steals the moment from her.

She chokes, not sure where the shudder she should have felt has gone.

“Oh,” rues Cecelia. “They don’t want you to finish so quickly. That...wouldn’t be fair.”

There is nothing. No, there is a wave of derision and disbelief. Carla feels as if she has been robbed of something. But suddenly, those sensations are gone too and replaced with a clarity-like understanding of being subject to a demonstration of power. Curiously, it makes her feels the want all the more keenly.

If she could arc her back and push against her seat, she knows she’ll feel where she is wet. And now, there is only one recourse.

Carla growls, “I’m not sure if I want you on my lap for this, or bent straight over.”

Cecelia drops her head with a strangled aural. Carla’s pride at having triggered that response is interrupted as her hand awkwardly supports the other’s weight. Before this becomes a problem of balance, though, a grotesquely defined claw sprouts from the twisted mass along Cecelia’s shoulder. It caricatures the scientist’s palm, pulling the other woman’s head up, and then back. Once more, a chest is exposed.

The impostor side of the bra parts in the centre to reveal the nipple and a pinched areola. A shifting, non-corporeal mob surrounds it like a vice -- coal black and ungiving. Whirling. It is teasing, and contrasts the soft, padded safety of spring green clouds protecting Cecelia’s other breast.

Carla cannot help with thinking again about how it must feel to have that many mouths nipping at her nerve endings. Endless, or tortuous. Her own nipples are hard in her bra and she is salivating at the way her attempt at empathy is driving her stupid with want. Carla is drowning in the smell that is her, and likely Cecelia (unless the ‘Helpers’ also have an emanation of used sex and pheromones?)

She has hands. She remembers that. How does she keep forgetting them when she needs them?

She grapples and hangs from the shirt placket, grateful for their tensile strength. Glad that the ‘Helpers’ are capable of managing the counterweight to keep Cecelia from toppling. She chokes on spittle and can’t help leaning in and pushing back and she still finds no purchase.

“They...ask, if...does it always take you this long to start an experiment?” croons the woman still standing. Somehow, barely...maybe…

Carla twitches with a grin. She needs her wit sharp enough to cut and: “I was thinking. Just...a thing that I do.”

Her lips moisten themselves. Her tongue is dry. There is something like cold water poised above her tailbone. Goosebumps up her back. Nipples hard, but oh, not like Cecelia’s.

When Carla’s mouth encompasses the fabric, she can feel the point through the layers with her tongue. She can draw her teeth under the weight of the bosom, pressing it up in the limited space that it has. At her ear, she hears the soft schlucking from the tendrils on the other breast. Cecelia trembles under the mouths. Carla snags at wire with her teeth. It slips free but she keeps her tongue busy, trading cloth for skin. There is sweat and the trembling turns to shivers and a moan as Carla drops herself further, to lick a stripe up Cecelia’s stomach back to her bra. This isn’t going to work to keep Cecelia from thrashing, but the ‘Helpers’ seem to follow that thought.

They adjust constantly. Fluid. Intuitive.

Cecelia stutters something unintelligible. Carla slicks her tongue, probing at the pressure of the bra wire before drawing one side of Cecelia closer with her grapple -- push/pull. She breathes in a bulk of the padding, thinking of condensation or moisture farms or air currents in mountain ranges. Her tongue is dry from fabric and desert life. Her lashes slip across the skin over the cup and the nipple crushes gently under folds of the polyester silk. The lace scratches her face. She crushes the cup less gently with her teeth, now.

Then something settles almost imperceptibly in the crevice of Carla’s thighs.

“Ughoh,” she huffs into the chest of the reporter. She strains and feels the belt loops pull. It cinches her jeans against her crotch but that takes away from the new presence there. Lingering.

“It’s going to reach around your hips from overtop,” Cecelia speaks. Her voice does not waver or break, though her body continues to twist and jerk in furtive movements. Despite there being muffled movement along her other breast, her words are steady. Almost outside of herself. “Are you listening?”

Carla tries to swallow. She doesn’t know where to look to avoid infesting shadows. She musters a meek, “Uh huh?” just to have responded.

“It’s going to grab the band of your panties, and it is going to pull. They will stretch them against your clit. You will feel that before you feel them press in, sucking…”

Carla whimpers, and tries to silence the sound by taking in the cup once more. She is not going to be a babbling, unintelligible mess if she can help it.

“You will feel the layers press into you. Are you stimulated? Should our parts by your spine also come find your ass?”

“Ohmm,” Carla slides her face to the side, cheek damp against the bra. Her words fight to make sense around a dehydrated mouth that tastes of cotton and laundry. She might be babbling afterall. “Who is talking?”

“Everyone,” Cecelia says. Her explanation closes with a whine. A pant. No, the panting is from Carla. She tries to stop but: “You’re...damp. You can stay damp forever if…”

“No…” Carla clenches her eyes closed, aware that she cannot do the same with her legs. She twists her hips and the belt counters the movement so perfectly that it is as if she has never tried. Or she moves and instantly forgets the success? Carla brings her top incisors over the border of the bra and tries to be as ghostlike as her satisfaction. Tries to prove to Ceclia and the things present that she is self-reliant and in control. She hears the pitch of Cecelia’s Voice. It creates a background noise that should have silenced the entire world, weaving promises of a thin, awful power settling against the seam on the bottom of her jeans. The pull of panties pressing her clitoris into the soft, everyday cloth of them and then the hot, unyielding denim providing friction. And then the ‘Helper’, firm underneath. Warm. Cold too. Electric.

 _Fuck_.

She involuntarily drags her incisors along the hidden skin Cecelia’s bra no longer shields and it is not moist like the cup over it. Not moist like her but...she hears the hiss of Cecelia and before she can feel sorry for braised skin she feels something pinch and latch below.

She swears into the breast and wishes for the hindsight to kiss the flesh she’s marred. She nuzzles instead, not sure if she is responsible for how the other breast is treated, or if she is now following the shadow-things example through subconscious something-something. Words, not…right flowing. Ugh. The lace fits in her clenched teeth and she pulls it down, viciously. Uncoordinated. And she lets go as something catches down against her...oh, she knows the names of the parts...the... _hood_ of her clit -- clasping, vice, twisting -- through the tight jeans -- cameltoe -- and...she’s leaking. Or…

She remembers that she has hands and when she opens her eyes to draw away or touch, she finds her wrists wound with tattered shirt and suspender parts, fists still clutching at the remains of Cecelia’s ruined placket. When had that --

The friction again, more forceful. Then slow grinding. She can feel the forgotten tendril beneath her pants, prodding at the elastics of her panties, bordering at her hip. They’re so close. She might be crying. She doesn’t know what Cecelia is saying but it doesn’t sound like English. She cannot hear sucking or smacking at her crotch because the ‘Helpers’ seem to share her fear of undignified noises. And Carla regrets teaching that, longing to hear them. Forgives them when she realizes that the clumsy sounds could push her over. Forgives herself.

She feels the precipice. She stands on the edge with her shoes over the side, halfway. A teeter. There are other things smothering her feet, though. Ropes and ropes around her waist and climbing her legs. She can’t fall when they keep her up. An hour passes. A year? She cannot beg enough, or make an offer. Carla knows it is dangerous but she will give anything for just a press. Please, just push. ONE PUSH.

Give **_anything_**.

Her teeth clamp on skin and her mouth is a dozen mouths, pieces of black holes clinging like grappling hooks against her lips and the smack of saliva-slap, skin-nerves VOICE heaving in a breath of backwards screaming, desklamp exploding SCIENCE!

She pulls, and Cecelia tumbles to her knees. The chair rolls back and something presses into Carla through the denim. Into her. It breaks any sort of semblance of thought she might have ever had, just as it breaks physics and soundwaves and two very singular woman. There is Cecelia sobbing with delayed gratification and a pinprick of light, like a lamp popping or a space laser challenging a darkened world. Then there is a muffled scream and a radio host’s mouth and…

Well.

The “perfect,” she hears as she stops hearing is not a Voice Carla has ever encountered before.

She doesn’t fall out of her chair because it is a reliable chair, small and functional. It has wheels.

It also has a seatbelt with a million arms and all of them are holding her.

*

Carla wakes when the room vibrates. The space feels strangely bare. There is a weight in her lap and her hands are painfully numb and knotted in a destroyed shirt. It is Cecelia’s shirt and the host drapes across the scientist’s thighs with a bare back and a bra that has seen better days. Cecelia breathes lazily into Carla’s crotch and Carla’s jeans are digging into her. She’ll have to move to adjust them.

The ‘Helpers’ are nowhere.

Or maybe they are outside keeping alien invaders away from the laboratory. A part of Carla doesn’t know where the idea has come from but it feels true. She cannot prove or deny it without getting up.

She puffs out a breath and mutters, “my work is _here_.”

She pets her girlfriend, who is snoring softly.

On the floor is the ruined remains of an elastic band shaped like a heart. It lies next to a pearl button.

 

\--

 

((You may have noticed a gap in the middle of a paragraph. I spent two hours trying to make the formatting work. I originally had white text. Here is what the paragraph should have said:

 

Cecelia smells like cigarette smoke and swimming pools. The chlorine comes from the day’s crisis at the public pool that the reporter had been on scene for. It masks the other scents that Carla has categorized during prior dates -- nosebleed iron, petrichor, a perfume that Carla had developed ~~ _because memories are strongly tied to scent and that is how she overwhelmed the Man in the Tan Jacket, revealing him to actually be a woman which had some far reaching and unexpected consequences for Carla and Night Vale and gender as a whole. And while that gets sorted, Carla has been told to forget the encounter but never the smell,_~~ and soap that her family used to buy when Carla had been _pequeño_. The scientist makes it obvious that she is breathing in her date’s smell before the button pops free, tucked behind her teeth. Cecelia’s shirt flutters open, brushing the sides of her seated partner’s face.

 

I am so done right now with formatting.))

 


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